


Next of Kin

by Sarielle



Series: Shermaine Pines AU [6]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Brought to you by Sorrow Suffering and Sufjan Stevens, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hoo Boy i'm sorry, Inspired by Music, Jewish Pines Family, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pre-Canon, Shermaine Pines AU, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 04:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5898406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarielle/pseuds/Sarielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fil answered the phone, Opal heard him from the other room slightly gruff, not liking to be bothered by telemarketers or sales calls at this hour. </p><p>(A scene mentioned in A Life and Time of Shermaine Pines. Can be read as a standalone)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Next of Kin

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I wrote this back in November and completely forgot to post it while I was busy with other things. I'm gonna straight up say it this little fic is pretty miserable, and i'm sorry but I really feel for Ma Pines, and I think she deserved better.  
> This is very much based on Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens, and the mention of Independence day references that in Shermy's canon Ford went through the portal on July 4th 1982 the same date it opened in NWHS (which I know doesn't fit with all the snow and such in ATOTS but blame it on Gravity Falls climate of weirdness why don't you, the show does some shit with timelines)

> _The hospital asked should the body be cast_  
>  _Before I say goodbye? My star in the sky_  
>  _Such a funny thought to wrap you up in cloth_  
>  _Do you find it all right, my dragonfly?_  
>  _…_  
>  _Well you do enough talk_  
>  _My little hawk, why do you cry?_  
>  _Tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook burn?_  
>  _Or the Fourth of July?_  
>  _We’re all gonna die_
> 
> _-Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens._

Opal Pines wasn't psychic. Not really.

Her own mother used to prattle on about the women in their family being ‘sensitive’ to the supernatural and for the sake of her branding Opal had rolled with it but deep down, she didn't actually believe in such a thing. Her real talents were firmly rooted in performance and an understanding of what people wanted to hear, but sometimes, just sometimes there were _feelings_ where she just knew what was coming, and those feelings were never good.

When the phone rang late one night she was busy tucking little Shermy into bed. Sherm was almost twelve now but that didn't stop her being the baby of the family, Opal thought. Besides, you had to appreciate them while they were young. Too soon this doe-eyed little girl would be grown and gone and Opal would be alone, once more. Lying her way to some counterfeit happiness.

Fil answered the phone, Opal heard him from the other room slightly gruff, not liking to be bothered by telemarketers or sales calls at this hour. She pressed a kiss to Shermy’s temple and moved to turn out the light.

 As she stood up something ominous hit her low in the gut, a sense of dread pouring like concrete down her throat and into her chest. Something was off. Something had happened.  She’d been feeling this unspecific sense of dread for near on three weeks now, since Independence Day actually, and it finally reared its ugly head and pulled at her chest. 

She moved into the living room. Filbrick was sitting in his armchair. His expression grimmer than usual.

“I- yes that's correct, Glass Shard Beach. I-uh-yes. Thank you for letting us know.” He put down the receiver, and stared though her, looking dazed. 

“Fil, honey?” she asked, voice straining. “Who was it?”

Filbrick took his shades off. He left them lying on the side table and stood up with a click of bones.

He crossed the room to where she was standing and put a hand on her arm. Reassurance, Opal noted, but why?

She looked him in the eyes, one deep brown, one milky white and scarred. They were shining in the light. Filbrick never cried. Even when his father died, he'd been unchanging as a rock. Like a statue. Her touchstone.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” She asked, though she felt the answer line her stomach with bile before he even spoke it.

“Opal, darl” he cleared his throat. “That was the hospital in Oregon.”

Her breath caught. “Stanford!? No. Oh God, Fil. Is he okay!?

“It's not Stanford, _motek_. He cleared his throat hurriedly once more and took both her dainty hands in his.

“Not Ford? Than who?” and a crushing feeling in her chest answered the question as the name rolled off her husband's lips.

“Stanley's dead, Opal.” His fingers tightened around her own.  Filbrick clenched his eyes shut. “There was an accident.”

An image of a little boy dark messy hair, freckles and Band-Aids came to mind. A gappy smile and quick feet that always tracked sand in the carpet. A soft, sweet, little bundle in a blue blanket. A scrappy trickster of a youth with bruises and a wicked smile, always there whenever his mother needed something fixed, or tinkered with. “Sure Ma.” He’d say and flash that wonderful showman’s grin, like his father’s. A sad and struggling nineteen-year-old on a park bench who smiled at her like a waxing moon. Bedraggled and down on his luck but still shining for the world to see, “Don’t worry, Ma. I’ve got a plan.” He’d said.

But where was he now?

“Stanley?!” her own voice sounded shrill and unfamiliar to her ears. She shook her head.

“No. No. _No._ Stanley wouldn’t be in Oregon it must have been a mistake, I'm sure they make mistakes, is Stanford alright? Did they call him?!”

“All she said was we were listed as next of kin. They want us to go down to the hospital in a couple of days…to Ah...” Filbrick stumbled on his words, an uncommon occurrence, he always said what he meant to say first time around. He turned his good eye away from her. “To…uh...identify…  the remains. They're sending them to Mercy hospital in town.”

Opal couldn't breathe, she sunk to the floor. Sobbing. This wasn't really happening. Eleven years of estrangement, ten since she'd last seen him and for it all to end like this? No. This was all a mistake.

Filbrick held on to her for dear life, his mask of detachment cracking at the edges in the sheen of his milky eye and the downturned corners of his mouth. Opal covered her opened mouth with both hands, keening.

“My little sunshine, my free spirit, my bubby, my baby boy.”

So many tears she had cried over Stanley in the past decade, so many nights she’d waited up with the back light on, just in case. All the times she’d set too many places at the dinner table because She’d just expected him to come when she called. This wasn't how this was supposed to end.

_Not like this. Not like this. Not like this._

No mother should outlive their child, but then Opal had been no mother to Stanley.

Filbrick helped her up standing on swaying feet. “Sshh, darlin’, I’m here I've got you.”

“Ma? Pop? What's happening?” In the doorway stood a little girl in a lilac nightgown, she hugged a stuffed rabbit tight to her chest. Her little voice was frightened.

Filbrick squeezed his wife’s arm. Her moved to block her from the girl's line of sigh.

“Don't worry yourself about it, Shermaine.  Go back to bed” he said frowning at his daughter.

Shermy didn't budge, brown eyes huge. “Mom, are you crying? what's wrong?”

“Oh it’s nothing, doll.’ the lie slipped like honey from her tongue, “Nothing important. You know your Ma, bubby. I'm a big ol’ crybaby. it's nothing to fret about, come on let's get you back to bed." Her inhale caught like jagged glass. 

“I'll call Stanford”. Said Filbrick, he reached out and tucked some hair behind his wife's ear. “Maybe he can shed some light on this whole thing.”

Opal didn't get much sleep that night. Filbrick came to bed about one in the morning with the news that Stanford confirmed he'd known Stanley was in Oregon. He'd also said  they'd talked briefly but left on bad terms.

There was silence as they lay together in the dark, the bed they’d shared for thirty years feeling somehow alien and uncomfortable.

 _God, she’d loved them both so much_. They hadn’t been expecting twins. Then Stanford had had those extra fingers and Stanley was a weak kid, a small and under-cooked baby but she’d loved them from the minute the nurse had laid them in her arms.

She had loved him, she still _did_ love him, she would continue to love him till they put her body in the earth. No, No. Stanley couldn’t be dead, once again denial licked at the insides of her eyelids offering tempting lies and false hope but she pushed it back. Her baby boy was gone, further out of reach than before. She couldn’t follow him, not yet anyhow.

“I’m Sorry.” Fil said into the darkness. His wife wasn’t completely convinced he was talking to her. She felt hollow and quiet, the last few hours had eviscerated her insides, all she was now was a porcelain shell.

Opal rolled away onto her side, loose tears falling onto the pillowcase.

“Sorry don’t raise the dead now, does it?”


End file.
